Landing page experience is one of the three components of Quality Score in Google Ads (alongside expected CTR and ad relevance). In AI Max for Search, Quality Score components influence the AI's ability to win auctions efficiently. Low landing page experience scores mean the AI has to bid higher (paying a premium) to win the same auctions it would win cheaply with better landing page quality.
What Landing Page Experience Measures
Google evaluates landing pages on:
Relevance: Does the landing page content match what the ad promised and what the user was searching for?
Transparency: Is it clear who owns the page, what it does, and what will happen to user data?
Navigability: Is the page easy to navigate? Does it give users the information they're looking for without requiring extensive scrolling or multiple clicks?
Mobile experience: With AI Max serving across devices, mobile page speed and usability are critical. Google's Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) are the technical proxies for mobile experience quality.
Loading speed: Slow pages have higher bounce rates. Google factors loading time into landing page experience — pages taking over 3 seconds to load on mobile score poorly.
How Landing Page Experience Affects AI Max Bidding
In AI Max for Search, Quality Score components influence Ad Rank. Ad Rank determines whether your AI Max ad shows, in what position, and what you pay per click (higher Quality Score = lower CPC for the same position).
With AI Max's expanded query matching, low landing page experience has compounded impact:
- The AI is matching your ads to more queries (including some lower-intent or less-specific queries)
- For those lower-relevance matches, the landing page relevance score is lower
- The AI has to pay a higher effective CPC to win those auctions
- This raises average CPC and can undermine the efficiency the AI Max model is trying to create
In keyword-based campaigns, you could control which queries hit which landing pages explicitly. In AI Max, the AI decides URL routing (with URL expansion enabled). Poor landing page experience across your site's pages means the AI has fewer "good" URLs to route to.
Core Web Vitals as AI Max Performance Inputs
For AI Max for Search and AI Max for Shopping (https://yositeup.com/blog/google-ai-max-shopping-replacing-performance-max-2026), Google uses Core Web Vitals as a signal in page experience scoring:
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Time until the largest visible element loads. Target: under 2.5 seconds.
INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Responsiveness to user interactions. Target: under 200ms.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Visual stability — pages that "jump" as they load score poorly. Target: under 0.1.
Check your Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console (Performance > Core Web Vitals). URLs that fail these thresholds score poorly for landing page experience — and are likely routes the AI Max system will deprioritize for URL expansion.
The June 2026 Deletion and Landing Page Quality History
The June 2026 data deletion (https://yositeup.com/blog/google-ads-reporting-data-deleted-june-2026) deleted Google Ads data, not Google Search Console or Quality Score component data. Landing page experience scores stored at the keyword or URL level in Google Ads are less likely to have been directly affected by the deletion.
However: the AI's learned associations between URLs and conversion rates (which inform URL expansion in AI Max) may have been partially reset by the deletion. URLs that historically showed high conversion rates post-click may need to rebuild their reputation in the AI's model.
This is an indirect effect: the AI may temporarily route less traffic to your best-converting pages (if those pages' conversion history was in the deleted data), reducing the efficiency advantage of strong landing pages during the re-learning period.
DSA Migration and Landing Page Quality
DSA campaigns were explicitly landing-page-driven — the AI matched query content to page content. This means DSA advertisers have (by necessity) paid attention to page content quality. This transfers well to AI Max for Search (https://yositeup.com/blog/google-ads-dsa-ai-max-migration-february-2027):
- Pages that performed well in DSA (matched high-intent queries, generated conversions) are good candidates for AI Max URL expansion targets
- Pages with thin content or low relevance should be excluded from URL expansion via URL expansion filters before AI Max migration
- Add specific URL targets for your highest-quality pages in RSA assets to give the AI clear direction
The July 2026 ToS (https://yositeup.com/blog/google-ads-tos-july-2026-ai-automation-what-changed) doesn't change landing page quality requirements — they remain Google Ads policy. But it's worth noting that the AI's URL expansion authority under the new ToS means poor quality pages on your domain may be served to users without your direct selection — audit your site's pages before enabling URL expansion.
Practical Landing Page Checklist for AI Max
Before enabling AI Max for Search with URL expansion:
- Check Core Web Vitals for all key pages in Search Console — fix LCP issues (image optimization, CDN) and CLS issues (reserve space for dynamic elements)
- Ensure every product or service landing page has clear, specific content relevant to target queries — avoid thin pages
- Verify that landing pages have visible trust signals (security badges, testimonials, clear business info)
- Test mobile responsiveness on actual mobile devices, not just dev tools
- Set URL expansion filters to exclude pages you don't want the AI routing to (thin pages, pages under construction, checkout-only pages)
For AI Max for Shopping: product page quality affects ad quality. Product pages should load fast, show current inventory/price, and have structured data (JSON-LD for products) for Google's page parsing.
Top comments (0)